


Twelve Months

by petercapaldiscoiffure



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: BDSM, F/M, not particularly explicit, relationship trajectory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-11
Updated: 2016-07-11
Packaged: 2018-07-23 00:15:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7459114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/petercapaldiscoiffure/pseuds/petercapaldiscoiffure
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a few months, they'll both have gotten what they need out of this little arrangement and the Inquisitor will be on her way, rifts sealed, Inquisition just a blink in her life, and with a few more stories to add to her collection. He hopes they're flattering.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Twelve Months

**Author's Note:**

> The BDSM mentioned veers outside the familiar territory of ropes, though it's not particularly explicit and amounts to about four sentences. But if that bothers you, skip the first paragraph of month 6.

The first month, Emeline tells him he's a good man. Bull’s not so sure about that, but she seems to believe it, and he likes her enough to give her the benefit of the doubt. It makes him think, too. He likes her, and she definitely seems to like him, and at this point, he figures - shit, why not? Nothing to lose, everything to gain, even if just for a little while.

The first month he comes to her rooms, she's exactly what he expects. Sweet - above all things, their hapless Inquisitor is sweet as the little tangerine candies she favors, never one to make much of a fuss without a laugh to soften the edges. Talks a mile a minute when she's not otherwise occupied, but in a funny way, the sort of way that makes him think she's wrapped a few people around her dainty little finger with a thousand words at breakneck speed alone. Flirty, and so eager, and everything he knows how to handle like he knows how to handle a bloodied great axe, or a report that tells just enough but never too much, or a sword placed just so in the dip between the ribs. He's always been a sucker for a pretty pair of big brown eyes, and damn if he can't help his weakness for redheads. 

He's perfectly aware she's almost too...well, perfect, for his purposes at least. Anyone else, anywhere else, he'd have honeypot blaring in bright red letters in the forefront of his mind, let alone the back. But he's pretty sure he's got her down cold, just like the others. In a few months, they'll both have gotten what they need out of this little arrangement and she'll be on her way, rifts sealed, Inquisition just a blink in her life, and with a few more stories to add to her collection. He hopes they're flattering.

Still, sometimes he catches her watching. Watching the Seeker, watching Solas, watching the Commander - watching him, the way he watched her. She'll wave, maybe, or just smile and start talking to Sera. It's discomfiting, just a bit. He realizes the irony of it, at least.  

* * *

 

The second month, she's still sweet and she's still batting her big brown eyes, and she's still never used the watchword. That worries him just a bit. He doesn't push her hard - the whole thing is new enough on it's own - but he gets the sense she's testing him, daring him even. _Give it your best shot._ Or, the other option - that he read her so right he wasn't actually prepared for it. There's enthusiasm and then there's enthusiasm, and she seems to have no complaints. She's a hell of a lot more experienced than he'd realized, that's for damn sure - something he should have considered, given the rock solid boredom that must have been the standard Circle routine. Everyone has to get their kicks somehow, and hers clearly hadn't stopped at smoking the occasional contraband. And he'd be lying if he said he didn't have a spring in his step lately. 

Still, it's something to think about. What they do isn't the sort of thing you want to be one upping each other on, leads down a shaky road. He files it away for another day, another talk. One where she doesn't laugh and start rooting around for a pipe, or smile winsomely at him while drawing absurd parallels to some play he's never read in a classic diversion move, or pop her knuckles nervously until he starts to feel himself going into some sort of warped reassuring Tama mode (although he's beginning to suspect the moments of actual nervousness she's ever experienced in a non-combat situation number on one hand.)

The second month she's stopped asking him about the Qunari altogether. She asks him which novels he likes, and what parts, and what countries he's been to and which he liked best and how to say 'I have to piss like a racehorse' in the Seheron Qunari dialect, and how he would seduce the cook. With regards to the last one? Slowly, he tells her, with chats over tea and bonding over the life of a foreigner in Orlais, and the occasional very gentle nudge against his leg. To test the waters. The head cook is, after all, nearly 70 years old and highly strung. You have to take your audience's potential reactions into account, especially the bad ones, he tells her. She nods, absolutely attentive, and he'd almost think she really was memorizing every word coming out of his mouth in some bid to woo ol' Antonio. He's beginning to understand why some of her old Ostwick pals hated her - she has teacher's pet written all over her cheerful little face. 

That conversation ends with her declaration that she'd just wear a low-cut blouse every other day until his resolve weakened and he'd make a pass at her, or be amenable to one of her own. Easy peasy. Bull, sex sleepy and indulgent with it, reminds her that people aren't always that easy, you have to have a little finesse, but maybe he'd go for it. She does have great tits. She just pulls on her pants, shrugging and muttering something about how it worked on the Knight-Commander. When he stares, she shrugs. How else, she asks, did he think she managed to run the entire Circle garden with minimal oversight, let alone grow and move strictly sanctioned strands of various herbs and plants in and out of the tower?  Of course, she liked the Commander quite a bit, too, in his way. That helped. She shakes her head. She tells him he's sweet. She stretches, and kisses him on the nose and goes to leave for afternoon tea and a gossip with Josephine. He lays in his bed for a good ten minutes after that, staring at the hole in his ceiling.

* * *

 

The third month, she's a little less sweet. Or, no, that's not right. She’s still charming as a kitten with fresh cream, but with claws too, sometimes. There's a sharpness to her jokes every now and then, and only in private. Never truly mean, just...observant, in that sort of way you don't share out loud, unless you want people to think you're an arsehole, as she once put it. She's funny, which he knew, but wickedly funny when no one is around, which surprises him a little. He discovers she talks to her plants - really talks, like actual conversations. To her weird skull she found, too, in that creepy temple with the Vints, and once she tells him through a cloud of sour smoke that the skull talks back. He assumes it's a joke, and asks if the plants talk too. She looks at him like he's maybe a little stupid, or like he might be taking the piss, but very politely informs him that no, they don't. She wouldn't dare smoke anything that talks, she says. That's her rule. He says it sounds pretty solid, all things considered.

The third month, she finally uses the word, after he'd felt the need to remind her, yet again, that it was ok and he'd just switch tacts, not slam the door shut on her. He likes her a lot, it turns out, and even if he didn't like her as much as he does, he'd still want her to be comfortable. He is not, after all, an asshole. Not all the time, anyway. It really was starting to make him nervous, because he'd come to realize she might not actually tell him he'd fucked up until it was too late, and he couldn't do anything to fix it. So she finally uses it when he's putting the first loop around her wrist. And then when he tells her to get on her knees. And then when he puts her hands behind her back, and so on and so forth until she's sitting on the bed, legs crossed and eating a peach and doing exactly nothing he's told her while he's trying not to laugh and thinking about how badly his balls are going to ache that night and how she couldn't be more pointed if she were fellating a fucking banana. It is, probably not coincidentally, the first time she tells him he can stay the night. He does, mostly to prove a point. The next morning, when she wakes him with soft lips to the scars on his shoulder he fucks her into the mattress, belly down and ass up, and she's laughing until she's moaning until she's pure liquid gold, her hands grasping for his, and he comes harder than he has in years.

The third month is also the month he discovers she snores, very quietly, like a tiny mouse with cheese stuck up its tiny nose. It's cute.

* * *

 

The fourth month, she gets a nasty cough that won't go away for nearly a fortnight. He's exiled to his old room in the tavern - contagion, she says, and nurses coming in and out throughout the night aren't so good for secret trysts. At night, in the rain, in the cold, he wonders why he never asked to have his roof patched up. And he's surprised how worried he gets the longer the cough lasts and how relieved he is when after a third bout of magical healing and another tincture of this herb and those twigs taken twice a day with strong coffee, she gets her color back. When he spends his first night back in her nice, warm bed, her still too tired to do much more than chat and drift in and out of sleep, he's at least 99% sure that that weird emptiness he felt back in his own room definitely wasn't loneliness. Well, maybe 98%.  

The fourth month, they get ambushed by bandits in the Hinterlands and maybe it's just because she's been cooped up so long, but she wallops one of them with the head of her staff and manages to slice through a second with the pointy end and definitely doesn't keep a nice magely distance. When they're all dead and she and Sera and Varric and even Bull are a little out of breath, she starts laughing like she's had the time of her life, or maybe like she's losing it a little. There's blood smeared on her cheek and Bull wants nothing more than to take her behind a tree and flip her robes up right then and there, but he settles for looking at her ass while she helps Sera search the bodies for trinkets.

The fourth month, they fuck on the war table. Twice. It's everything he dreamed it would be.

* * *

 

The fifth month, he's gotten the distinct impression the game's been flipped, and somehow his bid for...what, he's not even sure anymore. Control? Some sort of defined role doing whatever he deems necessary to keep her head on straight? Or to keep _his_ head on straight? Anyway, it's slipped out from his grasp somehow. Sometimes she steals him little berry scones from under the cook's nose because she knows he likes them, despite the fact that she could just take them and the cook wouldn't say a word, being the Inquisitor and all. Circle life dies hard, he assumes. Sometimes he finds himself playing with her hair while she keeps him up to date on Cole’s latest social successes, or Vivienne’s brilliant inversion of some potion formula he can’t begin to understand. 

Late one night she asks him, very seriously despite their nakedness and the spare helmet perched on her head, if he's getting everything he wants out of this whole - she can't come up with a word, just sort of twirls her hands. And he tells her of course he is - he's getting exactly what he needs, don't worry about old Iron Bull. She gives him one of her inscrutable looks, and just before he starts to get uncomfortable, just before he starts to grab for a thigh or leer at this curve or that, she rolls her eyes and takes the helmet off. As she reaches over to blow out the candles for the night, she looks over her shoulder. _It's alright to want things, you know_. And with that, the room goes dark save for the glow of the fireplace. It's an alarming lack of words from her, and he spends a good half hour listening to her breathing in and out, wondering why she has to make things so much more difficult than they need to be.

The fifth month, they kill a dragon. They save an Empress, and they dance at a ball where the nobles treat him like a talking animal and she tells him he's the most handsome man there, and he almost believes that she believes it, too. They drink too much Orlesian wine and eat all the little cakes, and she packs what's left into a silk napkin for the ride back to their lodgings. He loots the spicy nuts.

The fifth month, he calls her kadan. He's drunk, though, so it hardly matters.

* * *

 

The sixth month, high on their own success, they fuck like they're possessed. He brings out some extra rope here, a belt there, and makes sure no one is coming up to her rooms.  She slants her eyes his way during a noontime meeting, and that evening he's teaching her to strip her own birch branches. He takes to making sure he bathes in private instead of in the bathing house - too tough to explain away the bite marks on his thighs without implicating some innocent tavern girl or stableboy, Skyhold just isn't that big. She pushes him, he pushes her, she uses her word a few times, but mostly she doesn't. At night, her ass and thighs are striped red and sore, vague impressions of rope whorl across her skin and she's covered in sweat and any other number of things, every inch of her a bundle of frayed nerves. Her body curves into his in a perfect fit, the pounding of her heart a steady, soothing drum in his ears. In the mornings she pours tea and puts her hair up and frowns at the dreaded paperwork on her desk or the light welts that will make sitting very tough indeed if she doesn't have the right salve on hand. In the mornings, he slips down early enough that only some of the staff will see, thinking about how she laughs when she talks to her flowers.

The sixth month, she asks about how Qunari - before they were Qunari - would declare they were serious about each other, if they didn't marry. She's clearly uncomfortable with the conversation, and unfamiliar with how to phrase it, given the obvious cultural differences at play. For once though, he thinks he knows how to give her the answer she needs and wants in one go. He's less confident when she looks at him like he's having her on, but shit, it's not like he can go back in time and tell the ancient Qunari to be less...violent, or whatever. He honestly thought it was kind of cool, if not a little over the top. He tries not to feel a little disappointed at her reaction.

The sixth month, she makes him horn balm. He has a harder time quelling the disappointment in his gut that time, but he smiles all the same and immediately starts to slap some on. It's pretty good - very good, actually. Nice texture. Smells like coconut, just like home. He uses up the jar over the next few weeks in the Approach, and doesn't ask for another.

* * *

 

The seventh month, they talk about Seheron, and the Circle, and kindly Tamas and sickly mothers and horrible fathers. The seventh month, she snaps at a shopkeeper to stop ignoring the Qunari attempting to do business with him. The seventh month, they pass a troupe of Tranquil being taken from one collapsed Circle to another, and for the first time he feels something almost like guilt. 

The seventh month, they fight. She asks him why he wants to keep things so secret. He tells her it was always up to her. She tells him he's pushing off responsibility onto her when he never gives her any indication of what he wants, and if he says the word need one more time she's going to throttle someone. Probably him. He manages to talk her down, and he's not lying - he's never intentionally kept their relationship secret. Not because he's ashamed or anything, at least. It's just been easier, and she doesn't need the pressure of the whole world knowing the Inquisitor is fucking some Qunari merc on the side. For all that she questions him, she plays her own cards close to the vest, even if a lot of people don't realize it in the constant barrage of conversation coming from her mouth. He's more aware than anyone how people think of him. Hell, he encourages it. But he doesn't want her to be a joke, the way he's a joke. It works for him. It won't work for her, not in the long run. If she thought about it, he thinks, she'd realize it too. He doesn't say that, though - he just does what he knows best. Kisses her, talks soft and slow, teases a little, until she relaxes against him. He takes her against the desk. Like he said - it's easier this way.

* * *

 

The eighth month, they barely see each other at all. She ends up in the ass end of nowhere with Solas, Cassandra, and Dorian, looking into some ancient skulls or runes or whatever magical crap the Inquisition's decided they have to have.  He goes out with the Chargers on some jobs, clean-up mostly. Demons, demons and more demons. It's good, getting back out with his boys. Krem's had to step in more often than not with Bull usually out in the field, and he's almost forgotten how much he missed the bitching and ball-busting. Good ol' Krem. Gives him a chance to interrogate him about any recent conquests, mediate the brewing blow-up between Skinner and Grim (how Grim managed to piss off Skinner when all the guy does is grunt, Bull has no idea, but even Krem isn't sure of the particulars, so he decides not to ask), admire Dalish's new addition to her "bow" (suitably shiny.)  At night he tells himself he doesn't miss the tiny snores, but in the mornings admits that maybe he does. A little. Ok, maybe more than a little. He takes to reading one of her favorite plays, some Nevarran saga with a lot of death and an orgy. It’s not half bad. The violence is totally unrealistic, though. No one dies that quickly from their throat being slit.  

The eighth month, Sera sidles up to him in the tavern and asks him if he's missing the Lady Inquisitor. She winks. She’s  already a little drunk, tiny thing that she is, and it looks like she's having a muscle spasm. He's surprised she knows, and tells her, or mostly grunts at her - does he look like he's missing someone? He's just sitting in his usual chair. He supposes there is a suspicious lack of nubile waitresses hang around him, but everyone has to take a rest sometimes. Sera looks at him like he's daft, and then she tells him - _don't be daft, you great lug_. The Inquisitor told her a few months ago, maybe even four, and that's a right long time for him, innit? _So is it kind of official like, or what?_ And how does she even walk around, by the way? That's the real question that's been plaguing her. Bull eyes her, chuckles, and declines to elaborate, tells her to keep it quiet. He doesn't tell her she's four months off. Sera scoffs and rolls her eyes at him. _'Course I won't say anything, you tit. I'm not stupid._ She glances sidelong at him after pulling a drink from her mug. _Don't you hurt her, though. I'm warning  you. I have arrows._ Bull pulls a wounded face, then asks her about the rumors a certain archer's been seen hanging around the smithy with no weapons to commission or repair. He laughs when she turns crimson and busies herself with a bowl of spiced nuts.

The eighth month, it all goes to shit. Cassandra, Josephine and Cullen walk in on their 'reunion', and in a moment of panic she tells them it's just a fling. He reacts...badly. He regrets it later. She was surprised, after all, and she'd pointed out herself that he'd never actually told her what he wanted from her. Which she brings up, again, her voice shaking this time around. She was just covering her ass, he thinks, but later admits that maybe she was trying to cover his, too. But he never asked her to do that. Or...maybe he did. Or she thought he did. This relationship shit is more complicated than he ever realized - and that's what he thinks it probably is, now, when he keeps breathing 'kadan' into her hair after he comes or before he falls asleep, and he worries about her being sick, and she makes him fucking horn balm and for some reason thinks he might have very important opinions on how she should rearrange her room's furniture. Anyway, in the heat of the moment he tells her maybe the whole thing isn't doing her any good, and he's not bullshitting her, no pun intended. Maybe it's not. Maybe _he's_ not. And that hurts to think about, but there it is.

The eighth month, it all goes to shit, and she doesn't even cry, which is how he knows she's moved past angry to enraged to done, and she tosses a beautifully crafted dragon tooth necklace on his bed. She tells him she's sure there's any number of suitable candidates he could give it to, if he has a mind to. She doesn't want it anymore. After she leaves, he sits on the bed holding the necklace for a long, long time.

* * *

 

The ninth month, nothing. He's replaced by Cassandra or Blackwall on away missions, which is probably good - if emotions are running high, best to keep the irritant out of sight. He doesn't blame her. He hangs around Skyhold when not on jobs with the Chargers, drinks to excess, beats the shit out of anyone that'll take him on during training. He laughs and tells stupid stories, even gets a nice blowjob from one of his old favorites. Sera glares daggers at him, but no arrows are forthcoming. He's grateful for small favors. He still keeps the dragon tooth, carefully folded away in an old scarf he’s hauled across Thedas since Seheron.

The ninth month, he's miserable. Near the end, all he can think about is how much he hates his shitty bed, and his shitty room, and the shitty hole in the ceiling, and how nothing smells green and it's the wrong kind of quiet. Which is all stupid, because none of it should bother him at all, when it never did before. He asks Cassandra to beat him with a stick again. She complies, but the look she gives him is bordering so close to pity he asks her to stop before it does anything to help. When he's breathing hard, rubbing a forming bruise, she tries to talk to him. _Bull, we never meant...if I had known you two...I'm sorry. Maybe...if you go talk to her. She's unhappy too, I know it. Everyone can see, even if they do not understand the reasons._ It's mortifying. 

Still, later that night, he mulls it over in bed. The problem is, he's not a talker, never really has been. Oh, he can talk, alright, but not the way Cassandra means, with rose petals and declarations and all that other crap. What he can do is wine and dine any Orlesian noble or Antivan trader til he's blue in the face and happily richer in both gold and information. But she's not either of those things, and anyway, it doesn't feel right. She can see through it anyway, now. Maybe she always could and she just indulged him. She obviously isn't feeling very indulgent anymore. He pulls the dragon tooth from the drawer he's tucked it away in, looks it over. It is beautiful - with no reference to go off of, she managed to do a damn good job with the design. The metalwork is all twirls of vines and flowers with the occasional line or zig zag, no doubt meant to call back to its Qunari origins. It's not right, though. He thought he remembered telling her the tooth had to be split in half, but this is solid and whole. No exchange here, just one side doing all the giving and the other all the taking. If he were a more introspective man, he'd probably wonder who was who in that particular metaphor, but he's not, so instead he just turns it over in his hands for a bit, tracing the little marigolds in the metal.

The ninth month, dragon tooth in hand and the first signs of a light summer rain starting to sprinkle on his face, Iron Bull decides - _I can fix this._ A raindrop hits his eye. _Ok, the tooth first, **this** first - and then that fucking roof._

* * *

 

The tenth month, Iron Bull makes his way up the long, long set of stairs leading to her rooms. He hates those damn stairs. In the back of his mind, he thinks - this is fucking ridiculous. It didn't work out. He should just move on. Shit happens, right? And anyway, he doesn't do romance, or whatever this is. But here he is, death marching to what's left of his pride, yet somehow it doesn't feel so bad. If it ends poorly, well, he'll go beat some dummies, fuck that cute new scout, try not to think about dark auburn hair haloed in morning sunlight or potion-stained fingers that somehow always smell like orange candies or cold hands soothing his aching leg. They'll beat the shit out of that trumped up magister, the world will rejoice, and he'll be on his way. Simple, right? Right.

He meets her coming down the stairs, halfway up. She looks good, like she always does, if a little tired. Instead of the arch little smile she might have tossed his way before, her face goes closed, but she's nothing if not polite. He almost wishes she'd shout at him. He can work with shouting.

He asks if they can talk. She looks up for a second, at what he's not sure, then down, and then back at him and nods. She doesn't move, so he guesses this whole thing is going to have to take place on a set of ancient, crumbling stairs with a bunch of cranky ravens looking on. He briefly, wildly, wonders if Leliana's trained any of them to spy for her. When he grimaces - less because of the ravens, more because his left ankle is starting to ache in the humidity - her face softens for a moment because of course she knows, she's made more poultices for his leg than he can count by now.  She sits down, gesturing for him to do the same.

He doesn't actually talk, much. He's not Varric or Dorian or Viv, or even Cullen, stuttering sweetly and making everyone around him swoon. He just says what pops into his head and hopes for the best.

"I fucked up. I should've listened back before...well. When you were pissed the first time. I didn't and I'm sorry. I was an asshole."

She looks at him for a long moment before glancing down at her boots - new, he's noticed, nicer than what she normally wears. Probably on her way to talk to Vivienne.

"Well, I'm sorry I told Cassandra you were just a dalliance. I thought I was doing what you wanted, but I suppose I cocked it all up too. So." She rubs a scratch in the stone with her toe.  "You weren't, you know. Or aren't. A dalliance that is. Or whatever, Maker, I don't know anymore."

He rubs the back of his neck, glaring at one of the birds that seems to be eyeballing them before dropping his eye back down to her.

"Weren't? Or aren't?"

She glances at him, guarded again, and it's a beat or five before she speaks.

"Well, which do you want?"

And there it is, he thinks, that word again, always petty and weak to his mind, and somehow so important to hers. But now, he thinks, it's time to give a little. He's not Qunari anymore. Maybe it's time to move forward.

So, side by side in an old tower that smells of mold and bird shit, on a stair barely wide enough to fit him let alone another person, Iron Bull pulls out two dragon's tooth necklaces - a single tooth split in two and sized appropriately for one neck slender as a reed, the other thick as a tree trunk. Something flickers across her face before she catches it, and he doesn't dwell on what it is before he starts.

"I split it - you just made the one, and it was beautiful, don't get me wrong. I tried to make sure they did the little flowers again, see? But it seemed a little one-sided. And if you're with me, Em, then I'm with you." He pauses. "Look, I'm not any good at this shit. You always surprise me, kadan. I guess it throws me off my game. But I want to be, if you want me to."  He knows, fuck, _he knows_ his ears just twitched and they feel suspiciously warm. He secretly prays for a raven to create a distraction, maybe dive bomb him. She's  beginning to look a little damp around the eyes, though, and he figures - well, might as well go big or go home.

"Ah, fuck it. I love you."

And once it's out, as inelegant as it is, and with no prompting from her, no guide, he's surprised at how good it feels. Lighter, somehow. Maybe it's what she needs to hear, but it's what he wants to say, too. And maybe they'll end today the same as they started and that's fine, he'll respect that, but shit, at least he tried. There's something to that, fighting against the tide, something that doesn't feel half bad.

When her hand slides over his to grasp the smaller half of the necklace, he starts to grin - he can't help it. But she stops, looking up at him.

"...I love you, too.” She stops there, like she wants to freeze time for a moment, but then she takes a breath and continues. “But - Bull, we can't do things the way we did. You know that, right? With the dancing about and acting like nothing ruffles your feathers. I can't trust that, it doesn't feel...I don't know. It doesn't feel right, to me, somehow. I just need you to be more forthcoming. Maybe we both do. And _not_ just in the bedroom."

And that, he admits, is fair. She's not a tavern girl, or a fine noble lady looking for a thrill, or any other of his conquests - she's Emeline, _kadan_ , and she deserves everything she's willing to give him, even if it makes his skin itch a little to think about having to talk everything through when it already makes sense in his head. But he's not Ben-Hassrath anymore, and she's right - it's time to stop acting like one, at least where she's concerned.

So he agrees, as serious as can be, and she finally sniffles a little, and scolds him for being gone for so long and kisses his nose, his brow, his lips. He puts her half of the necklace around her neck, and damn if it doesn't look perfect nestled right between her...well. It looks great, anyway.

So, the tenth month, they have a quickie on the stairs. It's uncomfortable, the ravens are staring like creepy little peeping toms, and he ends up with a crick in his back that doesn't go away for two days, but it will remain one of Bull's fondest memories long after Skyhold itself has faded to nothing but an old warrior's fireside stories.

The tenth month, when they walk down out of her tower to a great hall filled with visiting nobility, the Inquisitor's arm looped through the Qunari mercenary's and twin necklaces dangling from their necks, the Orlesian gossip papers have their juiciest story since an apostate mage from the most noble family of Trevelyan walked out of the Fade itself. She burns most of the correspondence she receives as a result. Bull reads a few, then decides he'd really rather not. She puts up with it well, and to his amusement, gets surprisingly tight-lipped when questioned about their...well. Everything, really, that involves less than three items of clothing. Sera never does find out how she's still walking upright.

* * *

 

The eleventh month, it's gossip and fighting and fucking and bearing the teasing of their comrades, and yes, talking, even if it's still mostly when he's nice and relaxed and too fucked out to think too much. It's good, really good. Her rooms are essentially his rooms now - they were before, to be honest, but now he doesn't have to sneak out at the asscrack of dawn. He never does get that roof fixed. It's kind of great - he even finds himself bragging a little about the wonders of committed relationships to Cassandra of all people, who seems amused and even a little charmed by the whole development. And who wouldn't be, he thinks. He's pretty damn charming, and so's his kadan. They've got a good thing going. Still, it feels like something's ending, like they're getting close to Corypheus and some real answers. The elf is acting shiftier than usual. They finally finish their chess game. Bull loses, but it was a good loss, even if he still can't figure out how he didn't see it coming a mile away. He's not too put out, but Emeline finds a way to comfort him later anyway.

* * *

 

The twelfth month, Emeline tames a dragon. Bull is almost certain he's ascended to some sort of higher plane when he watches her stare down Mythal's beast, and if time hadn't been of the essence, and it wouldn't have been completely inappropriate given the total lack of tree coverage, he'd have shown her his appreciation right then and there. As it stands, as they're leaving he murmurs in her ear - _you're fucking amazing._ She bumps him with her hip, slanting a smile his way. _I'm only as good as the people I’m with._ She threads her fingers through his and he squeezes her palm. Sera makes gagging noises in the background.

The twelfth month, she warns him she might die, and if she does - they never get past that part, because he has to tell her to stop, the way his heart pounds and his body chills at the thought isn't something he wants to dwell on. He tells her, firmly and sincerely, that she's not dying - _we're making it through this together, kadan._ He doesn't tell her it's an order, but it's close enough. She's bad at taking orders on the battlefield, flashing around like lightning and always getting too close and too far away from him at the same time. He hopes she starts listening, for once.

The twelfth month, it's Corypheus who's dead, not her. Or back in the fade, he's not sure which. Maybe both. Solas is gone too, which surprises him less than it should. Shifty little fucker, but hey, if he wants to be free to bang some Fade ladies without the Chantry breathing down his neck, more power to him. All he knows is when he sees her alive and well, looking a little dazed but otherwise whole, a weight he hadn't realized seems to lift from his whole body. So he lifts her, too, in a bone-crushing hug until she has to tell him she can't breathe. He grins, puts her down. _Huh, look who's not dead?_ She smiles on an exhale, bright as a marigold. _Yeah, funny that._

And in the twelfth month, there's a banquet and tiny cakes and dancing and way too much wine. He watches her make her rounds, wondering if her cheeks hurt from all that smiling yet, wondering if they might have time for a trip to Val Royeaux now that there's some breathing room. See one of those plays she likes, pick up some new toys, catch up with some of his old friends and contacts. Maybe she could bring that plant she's always complaining about, see if one of the University's botanists can figure out why it has...uh. Dirt rot. White hat. Hat rot. Whatever she calls it. Krem could come along too, check out the new armor designs he's been aching on about. Humans - so obsessed with their armor.

Varric's sitting next to him, shooting the shit with Dorian about his trip back to Tevinter. Eventually he turns to Bull and brings up the obvious. _So, what about you? You're a free man now, right?_ And Bull agrees, he is. For the first time in his life, he can go anywhere and do anything, with nothing to tie him down and no choices being made for him. And Varric asks - and Bull is pretty sure this is going to end up in a book somewhere down the line, probably with unflattering lines about what does or does not constitute rippling, but he's too content to care - what does he think he's going to do? Take a cruise, maybe go find a particularly exotic dragon clutch to slaughter? _There's a lot of world out there, Tiny._

Bull laughs and nods, agrees that that's true, and it does have it's appeal. Still, his eye turns away from the table, lingering on the profile of a delighted Emeline laughing with Josie over fuck knows what, all flushed cheeks and mussed hair and big, warm eyes.

"Nah," he says. "I think I'm good right here."  


End file.
